A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

By Peter Ho Davies

A People 10 Best Books of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • An Independent (UK) 20 Best Books of the Year

"Wise, bracingly honest...A reassuring reality check...Exhilarating." —New York Times Book Review

A heartbreaking, soul-baring novel about the repercussions of choice that “will strike a resonant chord with parents everywhere,” (starred Kirkus) from the award-winning author of The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes
A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political experiences a family can have: to have a child, and conversely, the decision not to have a child. A first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests—and questions that reverberate down the years.
 
When does sorrow turn to shame?
When does love become labor?
When does chance become choice?
When does a diagnosis become destiny?
And when does fact become fiction?
 
This spare, graceful narrative chronicles the flux of parenthood, marriage, and the day-to-day practice of loving someone. As challenging as it is vulnerable, as furious as it is tender, as touching as it is darkly comic, Peter Ho Davies's new novel is an unprecedented depiction of fatherhood.

“There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies’s achingly honest, searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a story...The world needs more stories like this one, more of this kind of courage, more of this kind of love.” —Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author of The Friend

"There is nothing superfluous in these pages...A novel that...earns its place on the shelf alongside the frank and sometimes acerbic memoirs of Rachel Cusk and Anne Enright." —Claire Messud, Harper's
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9780544273221

Peter Ho Davies

PETER HO DAVIES’s novel, The Fortunes, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is also the author of The Welsh Girl, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and a London Times best-seller, as well as two critically acclaimed collections of short stories. His fiction has appeared in Harpers, the Atlantic, the Paris Review, and Granta and has been anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and The Best American Short Stories.

Reviews for A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

[amniot · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For readers who have been there and done that, this is a gripping oh-so-real book. It could potentially be triggering for those dealing with the aftermath of abortion or with family members who have autism or Asperger's or Alzheimer's, but read at the right point of your life, it is beautiful. Five stars.

[dwcofer_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The first section of the book, Chances, started off strong and was a gripping account of a couple debating an abortion based upon information from the doctors that the baby may not be normal. This is an emotional and engaging section of the book. This section was previously published in a slightly different form as a short story. However, the subsequent sections as their son grows up is rather boring. His day to day activities as he ages are so hum-drum. He plays, he goes to school, he draws, he plays with his Lego blocks, he gets pets. OK, I get it. The ending is also weak.The first section should have either been expanded or left as a short story.

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself traces the complex consequences of one of the most personal yet public, intimate yet political decisions a family can make: to have a child, and conversely, to choose not to have a child. A first pregnancy is interrupted by test results at once catastrophic and uncertain. A second pregnancy ends in a fraught birth, a beloved child, the purgatory of further tests—and questions that reverberate down the years.

[beamis12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5 A decision a couple makes, a decision that at the time they felt was right, that there was little choice. A personal decision that continues to haunt, the father, the mother, the marriage and even their view of the child they eventually have. This child, a son, different, having his own difficulties. A pervading sense of shame, failure, did they do the right thing, are they doing the right thing now? Thoughts, doubts, second guessing, atonement. The father, mother, son are never named. The book is told mainly from the father's point of view. An intimate look at fatherhood, sex, marriage parenting and decisions made. This is a unique read and an important subject but also presented me with a conundrum. It is told realistically I believe, though of course I'm not a man so may not be the best judge. But are men likely to read this book? And while the subject is an important one I always felt as if I was being held at a distancee. To be honest, reading over 200 pages of someone thoughts, regrets, which were often repeated, can get tedious. So ultimately my feelings, thoughts on this book are mixed.ARC from Netgalley